Outsiders do not know whether documents related to the 228 Massacre that Academia Sinica said it purchased five or six years ago contain any information about one of the victims — Lin Mo-sei (林茂生), former dean of the College of Liberal Arts at National Taiwan University and once the highest-educated person in Taiwan.
If any such information is available, but has not been made public, it would be a cause of irredeemable regret for Lin’s descendants, given that his second son, Lin Tsung-yi (林宗義), a psychiatrist and former director of mental health at the WHO, and his youngest son, Lin Tsung-kuang (林宗光), a professor of history, both died in the past five years.
“Mr Hu” (胡), the man who “half sold, half gave” the documents to Academia Sinica, said he is unhappy about the way in which the academy’s Institute of Modern History has been “taking its time” researching the documents and its failure to honor its promise of making them public. Hu has many reasons to be unhappy given the public’s desire for transitional justice and the eagerness of victims’ relatives to find out the truth.
The documents need to be sorted and investigated, but the research work should not be restricted to a single institution or specific academics. Tens of thousands of innocent people were massacred in the 228 Incident. While members of the generation who experienced those events firsthand, and sons and daughters of victims are still alive, the most urgent task is to make the documents public, rather than poring over them at a snail’s pace.
Publishing the documents related to this tragedy could be done at the same time as research, without conflict between the two. Making the documents public would also encourage academics who are interested in them to investigate them further.
Thanks to modern techniques of photocopying, scanning and digitizing, it is not difficult to preserve original documents, while also providing copies for outsiders to read. When the US government declassifies documents, they are all copied and handed over to the National Archives and Records Administration, which makes them accessible to the public. Hundreds of researchers visit the archives every day to read documents.
The rediscovery of some documents related to the 228 Massacre and the White Terror era could help clarify some of the facts related to the then-Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) regime’s violent rule and its scant regard for human rights.
The military police have recently been caught “unlawfully” searching someone’s property for lost documents. This act, and the motives behind it, are incompatible with a democratic system. Any further documents that come to light as a result of this incident should be made public as soon as possible.
When people call for transitional justice, it means they want to know the truth and where responsibility lies. Making documents accessible is the most important step in seeking the truth. The documents that Academia Sinica purchased should all be copied and made public. It is not acceptable for the truth to go on being kept under wraps in the name of research.
James Wang is a media commentator.
Translated by Julian Clegg
What began on Feb. 28 as a military campaign against Iran quickly became the largest energy-supply disruption in modern times. Unlike the oil crises of the 1970s, which stemmed from producer-led embargoes, US President Donald Trump is the first leader in modern history to trigger a cascading global energy crisis through direct military action. In the process, Trump has also laid bare Taiwan’s strategic and economic fragilities, offering Beijing a real-time tutorial in how to exploit them. Repairing the damage to Persian Gulf oil and gas infrastructure could take years, suggesting that elevated energy prices are likely to persist. But the most
In late January, Taiwan’s first indigenous submarine, the Hai Kun (海鯤, or Narwhal), completed its first submerged dive, reaching a depth of roughly 50m during trials in the waters off Kaohsiung. By March, it had managed a fifth dive, still well short of the deep-water and endurance tests required before the navy could accept the vessel. The original delivery deadline of November last year passed months ago. CSBC Corp, Taiwan, the lead contractor, now targets June and the Ministry of National Defense is levying daily penalties for every day the submarine remains unfinished. The Hai Kun was supposed to be
Most schoolchildren learn that the circumference of the Earth is about 40,000km. They do not learn that the global economy depends on just 160 of those kilometers. Blocking two narrow waterways — the Strait of Hormuz and the Taiwan Strait — could send the economy back in time, if not to the Stone Age that US President Donald Trump has been threatening to bomb Iran back to, then at least to the mid-20th century, before the Rolling Stones first hit the airwaves. Over the past month and a half, Iran has turned the Strait of Hormuz, which is about 39km wide at
There is a peculiar kind of political theater unfolding in East Asia — one that would be laughable if its consequences were not so dangerous. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) on April 12 returned from Beijing, where she met Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and spoke earnestly about preserving “peace” and maintaining the “status quo.” It is a position that sounds responsible, even prudent. It is also a fiction. Taiwan is, by any honest definition, an independent country. It governs itself, defends itself, elects its leaders, and functions as a free and sovereign democracy. Independence is not a
RSS